vegan recipes + plant-based living

Beet & Carrot Juice

February 17, 2013

I went home to California a few weeks ago for my sister’s birthday and to see my first (and brand new) nephew. After five years of living in Boston, going back to California was an experience. The air, the earth & the people inexplicably different. Sometimes, I amazed that this entire landmass is a country. There are cultural similarities, including language, but sometimes its hard to pick out where the differences end and the similarities start.

It had been over a year since I was home & I had a lot of stuff I wanted to bring back to Boston. At home I snagged my juicer that my sister and I bought when I was about eighteen. I cannot imagine the looks that TSA gave each other when they found a juicer in my checked bag. I also packed my favorite blanket my mom made me when I was a kid, a bunch of clothes I had left behind, some speakers so we could fill my house back in Boston with more music, and my bicycle. Yes, my bicycle.

It’s been snowing a lot these days. I think winter is more than skin deep. I think winter is not just weather, but a state of being. I have been working too much and sleeping too little. I have been quiet a lot lately, afraid that the more I speak the more winter will fall out of my mouth.

I have been forcing myself out of the house lately. I went to a workshop yesterday on abolishing the prison industrial complex and it made me think of all the important work that is left to do. All of the conversations, people, families & friends impacted by systems trying to beat winter into them.

I look at other food/vegan blogs and I wonder if their identities matter in this way to them. If they are confronting privilege & oppression via their work or if they find their food separate from this. I am looking at my own work and wondering how the politics of my identity will continue to influence what I do, if it will be something I am able to wrap my ahead around.

I want my work to not only give people access to healthy plant-based meals, but to also talk about the way in which veganism and queer culture intersect in my life. I look at many of the other vegan blogs, written (well) by heterosexual white women, and I wonder where my space is in this world.

Being queer, is not just a gender or an orientation, its a state of being.